In 2008, as the U.S. economy was sliding, Air Force Lt. Col. Ken Evans was stationed in Iraq and got a call from a civilian contractor there. They both lived in Las Vegas, and the contractor had some news: construction of the Echelon resort had stopped.
Evans, who owned a real estate consulting business, figured the problem was a labor issue. But he was told the project’s developer, Boyd Gaming Corp., pulled the plug on the $4.8 billion Strip casino.
“I knew then, there were going to be some changes,” he recalled.
After Evans came home, his pipeline of projects dried up and he eventually shut down his business amid the punishing real estate crash. But he found other work. He helped launch a promotions company, kept serving in the military and, in 2013, the year after he retired from the Air Force, was hired to run the Urban Chamber of Commerce.
The Urban Chamber is one of many business-advocacy groups in Southern Nevada, and the majority of its roughly 300 members are black business owners. The group, with just three employees — including Evans, 52 — had 250 members when he was hired.
It’s celebrating its 35th anniversary this year — it launched in 1980 as the Nevada Black Chamber of Commerce — and holding its annual awards gala Saturday at Caesars Palace.
Evans, chamber president, sat down with VEGAS INC at the group’s offices off Martin Luther King and Lake Mead boulevards, discussing his background, the chamber and his run at politics. The Democrat lost a race for the state Assembly in 2012 to outspoken, gun-loving Republican Michele Fiore.
Edited excerpts:
Let’s talk about your background.
I’m an engineer, my twin brother is an engineer, and our younger brother is an engineer. We were born and raised in L.A. My father was never in the picture; we were raised by a single mom, but she always stressed education. My twin and I were accepted to the U.S. Air Force Academy, but he finished at the University of Florida. My father is a sore subject for me. For the longest time, I hated him and the thought of him, because my lasting memory was him pretending, in a street in L.A., like he didn’t know us or didn’t care. Needless to say, I harbored some pretty strong feelings, but my mom got me to realize that hatred is self-destructive, that I’ve got to move on.
When did you realize you had an interest and a knack in engineering?
Junior high school. I used to play Monopoly, but I would turn the board over and draw roads and streets on the back. I used Legos to build houses and buildings, and I would take out a layer of cardboard from a shoe, cut it into strips and glue or tape it down to make freeways. Dominoes were my cars and trucks that I drove around the city I’d just made. I graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1985 and started as active duty — I got a commission as a second lieutenant. I was designing roads and streets and was a pavements engineer. I was active duty for almost 6 1/2 years, in Tampa, Korea and at the Tonopah Test Range. I joined the reserves in '91 and went to work as engineer for the U.S. Department of Energy. I also did some career broadening through the reserves — hotel management; MWR, or morale, welfare and recreation; mortuary operations — yeah, that was interesting — and food operations. In 2008, I was deployed to Iraq for four months, and I ran an engineering unit at the base in Kirkuk. I also spent six months in Afghanistan in 2010 and ran an engineering unit there. I was stationed at Bagram Air Base. I traveled around the county and was in some interesting situations. Fortunately, no direct fire, but I know what rockets sound like — hearing a whistle over your head, then you hear the impact a few seconds later.
After Afghanistan?
I retired from the Air Force. I had my ceremony at Nellis Air Force Base. That was March 2012. That’s also when I first told people I was running for state Assembly. By that time I’d been a business owner and was a retired lieutenant colonel. I thought I had a pretty good profile, and so did other people. Plus, I had been the sergeant-at-arms for the 2011 Legislature. I had direct contact, a direct feel for the process. I got around 42 percent of the vote. I was told I did pretty well, that it was close for a first-time, unknown candidate. In fact, I’ve been asked to run again for the state Legislature, but my focus right now is business and the chamber.
What was the business you ran?
Before the economy went south, from 2001 to 2008 I owned a company that did real estate development consulting — arranged financing, worked with jurisdictions to get entitlements. I worked with nonprofit groups that wanted to build single-family homes for first-time homebuyers. I also tried to line up opportunities on the for-profit side, say, with a private owner who had land and wanted to develop it. When I was in Iraq, I was attempting to line up projects for when I came back. I ended up taking some temporary positions, and I’d also go on extended active-duty tours. We had a rough economy here; I was fortunate that I had options other people did not have. Eventually, I had to shut the business down because of the recession. I was no different than a lot of other construction industry-based companies.
Contractor Frank Martin told VEGAS INC last year that after the recession hit, the pipeline of construction projects evaporated.
It did. I’ve been in the community for 26 years now; I have pretty good relationships, personally and professionally, that would help me leverage into other business opportunities from time to time. To go from that environment to nothing, it was an adjustment. One thing I did, I started a promotions company with some partners in 2009. We were doing social events, parties, fundraisers. Before joining the chamber, I was working with my friend Montez Love. He’s a licensed mechanical engineer and wanted to grow his company, so I was doing business development for him to get clients and new projects.
There are a lot of chambers of commerce in Las Vegas — the Latin Chamber, Asian Camber, Women’s Chamber, other niche groups, and the biggest of all, the Las Vegas Metro Chamber. I know your group mostly represents black business owners, but how do you compete for members?
That’s not all of our membership, but it’s definitely our core group, and I anticipate that will continue. But we reach out and are inclusive. We have a business incubator, programs, training, workshops, vendor forums. We just helped host a Brazilian delegation here and introduced some of our members to them. I’ll also be heading, with the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, to Botswana and South Africa right after Thanksgiving. The intent is, in summer 2016, we’ll take more of our members there with the hopes of, beyond just protocol and photo ops, there will be some actual commerce or contracts that come out of it.
The U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy said in a 2013 report that minority business owners often are less likely to be approved for a bank loan than white entrepreneurs, and if they get a loan, they often pay higher interest rates. Is that something you see in Southern Nevada?
Access to capital is a challenge everywhere, and definitely we have seen that here. We helped develop a relationship with microlender Accion, and they have a small office at the chamber. They wanted to open a presence in Nevada, so we jumped at it. Their average loan right now is around $9,000. In general, for any company that’s 2 years old or younger, most traditional lenders are not going to touch you.
How would you describe minority business ownership, specifically black business ownership, in Las Vegas today versus, say, 10 years ago during the housing boom, or 20 or 30 years ago?
We have a lot of work to do. We need more African-Americans to open businesses and become entrepreneurs. Historically, as a community, we’ve paid attention to our social challenges. More of us need to go into these new and emerging markets and do the hard work. We want our smaller companies to hit the million-dollar mark in gross revenue; it won’t happen overnight, but you’ve got to have a target. We also want some of our more established members to become multimillion-dollar companies, and we need two or three of our members to become multinational corporations.
Nonprofits in general can have a hard time financially. In 2013, the Urban Chamber was profitable, but it narrowed a lot from 2012 amid lower revenue and higher expenses. How are the group’s finances now?
We’re profitable, but margins are still tight. That’s what you can expect to see in a growth phase. I wouldn’t say we’re spending a lot to grow, but we’re making the necessary investments. It’s like any other business — if we bring on more members, that means we better provide more programming and services, otherwise we begin to churn, and before you know it you have a constantly revolving door.